Shopping impossible – why don’t people use Paypal for what it is good for?
Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010 at 9:13 amThe other day I logged into Paypal and was confronted with the following sight:
That was the end of breakfast for me but I was also excited – I like the idea of winning a year’s salary and I had to buy a mouse for a friend of mine anyway. Normally I would go to ebay for a mouse or directly to SVP who’ve never let me down in the past. But hey, let’s win that extra income, right?
How wrong I was. I found two mice I would love to buy, from Pixmania and another one from Novatech. I clicked through and I was asked to sign up for each of the sites. They asked me for my address, they wanted my email, all of it was hidden in horrid 5 step processes. Pixmania even signed me up for their deals mailing list before I was able to buy my mouse. I then was not able to buy the mouse without becoming a Pixmania subscriber – no thanks. Novatech was even more interesting – I was able to go through the whole process just to be told at the final checkout before paying that they would only be able to deliver the mouse to the address of my Paypal account – and not the friend’s address – although I was asked to enter her address first.
In short, I gave up. I went to ebay, bought the mouse, checked out using Paypal and I was done. I couldn’t win the yearly income but I also kept my sanity. There is simply no point in the implementation of the promotion right now. I like Paypal, I like its simplicity. Why the implementers don’t recognise that I come from the promotion page to their sites and just let me pay with Paypal (as this is what the promotion is about) and send the product wherever I want is beyond me. Why Paypal pays money and promotes horrible shops like that is also beyond me.
So if you use Paypal for your shop – give me a way in. You know me, I can sign in with Paypal – don’t ask me to sign up again for you and ask for all kind of data – filling in forms is annoying. I already give you a blank cheque, just let me find a product, click it and buy it.